[b][u][center]Endless Time Together
For ArrowQuivershaft
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]





The raid on Typhon’s prison should have been the end of things. Rescuing his wife, Dawn, from the clutches of that monster should have meant that the pair of them were safe forevermore. The time had come for them to settle down, to have a good life at home, to stop thinking about the safety of the world at large and focus instead on the way that they treated each other, on the love and wonder that they were supposed to share together. That had been the plan…
But creatures such as Typhon were things of horror, with powers beyond that of ‘should be’ or ‘could have been.’ And the vengeance of such things were horrible. 
Nathan returned home from the store to hear the soft squawks of his wife from the further rooms of the house. At first, he didn’t pay it much mind. She often made sounds to herself as she cleaned when he wasn’t around, though she was somewhat more embarrassed by the bird-calls when she and he were together. Her harpy heritage was something that she always felt came between them during certain...times...and he rarely managed to convince her otherwise. So, when he heard her sounding as bird-like as she did, he was more than willing to let her keep thinking that she was alone to enjoy it. 
But as he put the groceries away, he knew that there was something wrong. The sounds...they weren’t mere bird-calls, but the sound of someone struggling, someone that could not form words properly. He paused, his hand still inside one of the grocery bags as he realized that there was something in the air, something deep, primal. 
Something like what had infused the prison that he had rescued Dawn from. 
[i]No…[/i]
He pushed himself from the kitchen counter, running down the hall. He stumbled briefly, falling and catching himself as he shouted. 
“Dawn? Dawn!”
There was no response, save for the louder caws of a bird in pain. Nathan ran faster, faster, faster still, rushing around the corner and into the study. There, standing with her wings pressed against one of the bookshelves, was his wife. 
But at the same time, she was twisted, warped. Her legs were already half-grayed, her talons frozen splayed against the ground, and her upper body shaking. Streaks of stone had already crept up along her feathered thighs, running along her back and across her shoulders, freezing some feathers in place and beginning the process of petrifying others. She turned to face him, and the sound of stone grinding on stone was horrifying. 
“Dawn?” he whispered. 
“Nnngh...aw...A...Ath…”
She was struggling to say his name, even, let alone anything else. He tried to run for her, but she shook her head. When he extended his arm, her face, as much as it could move, took on an expression of horror. She shook her head again, nodding to the table. 
He had missed it before, but a note lay there. He slowly walked around the table, looking down at it for some clarification, anything. 
Instantly, he recognized the handwriting. It was from Typhon himself, the letters as large and swollen as the depths and the currents of the bottom of the sea. The great monster had sent this curse. 
[i]Let there never be said that one wins against Typhon,[/i] the letter said, followed by the coils of a petrification curse, and a powerful one. 
“Oh, no…”
“A...Ath...An…”
She couldn’t even finish his name, and when he looked at her, he saw that the stone had already crept partway up her face, tainting her flesh with the dark color of stone, with the ungraceful appearance of concrete and plaster. Her lips were half-gone, the vibrant rose taken, the life bleeding from her body. 
Nathan tried to think of some solution, but even if he had time to search their study, their library, there was nothing here that could rival the power of the curse. One would have needed a full circle to come close, and even that would have been a 50/50 chance, at best. Even calling other friends, other people that knew about this sort of thing, would have been wasting time; she was already half-transformed, and the petrification curse would only go further. She was all but gone, and there was nothing that he could do to save her from this fate. 
And from what he could tell, from her desperation to keep him from touching her, the curse was contagious. There was no stopping it once it started, and it could spread. He would be no more than a statue himself if he risked coming closer. 
She was crying, he realized. The water was turning to gravel as it left her eyes, and he wanted to cry at the sight of it, knowing the pain that she must be in. He saw her try to say his name again, but the stone had risen to her throat, and seized her vocal cords. Nothing came free, not even a wheeze. 
With her body frozen everywhere below the neck and the strings of gray reaching further up her face, he knew she was not long for the world. If there was something to say, he had to say it now…
But what did one say in a few seconds that would take a lifetime? What did one say that would encompass years of affection? 
Nothing...for only action could speak at this point. 
Making his decision in little more than a moment, Nathan took the scroll and put it against the doorway. For anyone that would come later, they would need the warning. He pinned it to the doorframe, then returned to her. She had managed to pull one winged arm from the shelf, managed to hold it out, and his hand hovered over her stone flesh. 
Through eyes that were barely able to see, Dawn managed to stare at him. She asked without words, without even moving, what he could be thinking. He answered her by taking her hand. 
The curse struck, and he hissed as he felt the spasm of a full-body cramp begin, the tension of total stillness and rigidity making movement almost impossible. Even as the first little strands of gray spread down his fingers, snapping his digits into place and making it almost impossible to think of anything but the raw pain of flesh dying, he leaned in, pressing his other hand to the back of her head. The stone rising through her hair touched him, collected him, sealed their bodies together there. 
[i]We will, at the very least, never part again…[/i]
Fighting the pain, Nathan leaned in, his lips pressed to hers. Cold. So cold, cold as a statue and as hard as one, too. There was no welcome, only agony as the same thing that happened to his fingers spread across his face. He wanted to scream, wanted to cry, but he would not break this bond. 
He could not lose her again. Not without losing himself, too. 
Thankfully, the pain began to fade at his fingers as the stone continued to rise along his arms, but the pain spread with the stone. It was like his body was dying, each cell passing away as it turned to stone, only for numb awareness to remain afterward. He could not feel her hand in his, only see it there. He could not see her lips against his, only knowing they were there. 
And even that soon faded, as he felt the stone taking its toll. The curse had spread to him fully, and as the stone reached up his arms, hardening, tensing, he could feel his heart slowing. The blood in his body had come to a halt, and his head spun as he realized that there would be a moment where he could no longer breathe, a point where he would be slowly drowning in the lack of air that was no longer being pumped through his veins. His blood soon stopped flowing, and he couldn’t even hear the roar of his pulse any longer. 
It was done. The curse had spread into his shoulders, along his back, his chest. His heartbeat came to a final stop, and he stood there, shaking, his legs the last free part of him. Strands of the rocky petrification had already spread along his lips, over his nose, along his cheeks. Nathan felt the urge to close his eyes, but resisted it, forcing himself to keep his eyes open as he looked at her. There would be no disrespect to his wife, no looking away at the end of things. No matter how much Typhon wished to punish them, he would not take that. 
And so, as his eyes froze, he suffered whole new agony, a cracking feeling that made him wish he still had the air to scream. His lips were locked with Dawn’s, human and harpy together, and he would have collapsed underneath the curse that was still running down his legs if he wasn’t holding tight to her. 
[i]This is it,[/i] he thought, feeling his knees sealing, locking as the stone came to them. [i]This is the end of us…[/i]
He wanted to be angry, to feel furious for their life being stolen from them, but...but there was something that they had taken back. Even if it was so little as to be almost nothing, they had, at least, taken back their life together. The revenge that Typhon had tried to take, of stealing one of them from the other, had been denied. 
[i]Alive or dead...we’ll be together.[/i]
Nathan held that thought in his head as the stone crept down his legs, sealing his calves in place, then his feet. He was locked in one position, would hold that position for the rest of his life. He stared through eyes that were dying, and the answer as to whether he would be aware of her for the rest of his non-existence was answered. 
He was not. 
He was blind. 
He was deaf. 
He was numb. 
A statue, in truth, unaware, floating in the great dark void. He had no heart to beat, no brain to think as everything went dark. All he could do was stare ahead, unaware of the world around him, and…
And…
And…
And there was nothing else. The feeling of magic, such as it was, faded from the room. Were there any left to feel it? Were the statues capable of feeling anything? The statues certainly could not answer that. 
But at least, they were together. Feathers to fingers, lip to lip, they were inseparable. And perhaps, living or dead, that was enough. 



[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: A petrification spell strikes a harpy, and her husband comes to find her changed. What will he do?

Tags: No sex, relationship, human, harpy, petrification, magic, sad, vengeance, sad end,